Is crop mode worth it? Here’s when (not) to use it on your full-frame camera
Jun 25, 2024
Dunja Đuđić
Dunja Djudjic is a multi-talented artist based in Novi Sad, Serbia. With 15 years of experience as a photographer, she specializes in capturing the beauty of nature, travel, concerts, and fine art. In addition to her photography, Dunja also expresses her creativity through writing, embroidery, and jewelry making.
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Some full-frame cameras come with crop mode that simulates an APS-C sensor. If you’ve just switched from a crop body to a full-frame camera, you may wonder, “Why on earth would I want to use that?” Well, Brent Hall dives into crop mode on full-frame cameras, giving you some pros, cons, and potential uses for it, even if you swear by a full-frame sensor.
Pros and cons of crop mode
Crop mode essentially crops the image captured by the full-frame sensor, resulting in a zoomed-in image with a smaller field of view. So, for taking sports photos or photographing birds and wildlife from far away, using crop mode could be a great tool!
Brent notes that the crop mode can benefit autofocus, especially with smaller subjects like birds. By cropping in, the camera has a larger area to focus on, leading to more accurate results.
The biggest drawback of crop mode is probably the most obvious one: the loss of megapixels. Basically, it crops the full-frame resolution you’d get otherwise, leaving you with a smaller overall image resolution. If you plan on printing large formats, this could be an issue.
Brent crops his images to 2160 pixels on the long edge, ensuring a clean display on 4K monitors. He also uses software sharpening to enhance details after cropping.
When to use crop mode
Brent suggests that you turn to crop mode for small, close-up subjects. These include insects or birds perched in trees. However, he advises against using it for most bird-in-flight photography. It’s better to use a longer focal length or teleconverter to avoid sacrificing image quality in cases like this.
Crop mode vs. cropping in post
Some photographers argue that cropping in post-processing is preferable to using crop mode in-camera. After all, this allows for more flexibility in composition after you’re done shooting and you transfer your images to your computer. However, Brent finds crop mode useful when he knows he’ll be cropping heavily anyway.
Ultimately, the best approach, as always, depends on your specific needs and preferences. As Brent says, “Opinions just don’t mean anything…go out and try it and then decide for yourself.”
[Wildlife photography with an 800mm F/4? via FStoppers]
Dunja Đuđić
Dunja Djudjic is a multi-talented artist based in Novi Sad, Serbia. With 15 years of experience as a photographer, she specializes in capturing the beauty of nature, travel, concerts, and fine art. In addition to her photography, Dunja also expresses her creativity through writing, embroidery, and jewelry making.
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3 responses to “Is crop mode worth it? Here’s when (not) to use it on your full-frame camera”
“Brent crops his images to 2160 pixels on the long edge, ensuring a clean display on 4K monitors”
I think this is a typo, should read “on the short edge” – the long edge is 3840 pixels – a 4k tv is typically 3840 × 2160.
Two things:
1. Cropping in would give you a smaller area to focus, not larger, and,
2. why would he crop the long edge at 2160 when the long edge of 4k monitors or tvs is 4096 or 3840 (UHD)? The short edge of 4K is 2160. Wouldn’t he want to crop the SHORT edge to that to maintain the same dimension? Unless, od course, he wants to crop all of his photos in portrait. and who wants that?
The most funniest part about your video is that you proved my point that mirrorless cameras actually handicaps the photographer now honestly I shoot with the Canon EOS 90d I don’t have subject tracking car tracking body tracking fish tracking bird tracking So I’m doing everything manually and you just proved my point that mirrorless cameras do handicapped photographer because you said that you would never go back to a DSLR because you love what mirrorless cameras do. Well I’m staying in the dlsr range I will not go mirrorless because I don’t need the extra handicap but, nonetheless I do understand your video and I’m still wondering you said that the crop mode increases the auto focus and that’s interesting that I didn’t know that the auto focus was a problem on the mirrorless cameras, but this seems to be a problem on every camera sometimes my 90d Canon could also miss a Beat, but in the long run for the most part it’s an awesome device and I get most of my pictures clean and uncut. It is a crop sensor and most of the time I appreciate a crop sensor camera for what it actually offers I would think that going full frame is the purpose of using the entire full frame I didn’t know that they actually put a crop mode on a full frame camera. I 32.5 crop sensor but a 100% in view finder. yes even a crop sensor I still crop my photo sometimes.